Dark Ages

The Dark Ages was a chapter of European history which lasted from 476 AD to 1000 AD, following the end of the Greco-Roman "Classical" period and preceding the High Middle Ages. The Dark Ages began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, with the Germanic barbarians such as the Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Suebi, Saxons, Angles, and Jutes overrunning the former Roman provinces of Western Europe. Western Europe and Italy were devastated by years of disease, famine, war, and pillaging, and the breaking of the Roman aqueducts led to the decline of Western cities. The lack of hospitals failed to cope with increased mortality rates, schools were replaced by churches (with the Catholic Church becoming the sole provider of education in the West, and almost every commoner being illiterate), and there was constant war between the Germanic tribes. While governments collapsed, the Church survived, ushering in the "Age of Faith", in which Christianity and the Pope became important factors in the political situation of the West. Monks lived away from temptations in deserts or mountains, while some devout women followed a similar path as nuns. The Benedictines built monasteries and cloisters and copied some Greco-Roman works, but 90% of the ancient world's works were lost during the Dark Ages.

The Germanic tribes began to settle down and form their own kingdoms in the former provinces of the Roman Empire, with the Franks settling in France and the Low Countries, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the British Isles, the Visigoths in Spain, the Suebi in Portugal, the Ostrogoths in Italy, and the Vandals in North Africa. Because of frequent warfare, most art from the Dark Ages was portable, including interlace and jewelry made by the Celts of Britain. Illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells were created, as was the Sutton Hoo treasure.

In the East, the Eastern Roman Empire continued to exist as the "Byzantine Empire", which fought against the Sassanid Persians and invading tribes to the north. The last truly Roman emperor, Justinian, was one of the greatest Byzantine emperors: he reconquered North Africa, southern Spain, and Italy. The Ostrogothic Kingdom, which sought to preserve Roman culture and adopt its values, later changed course and became anti-Constantinople, so Justinian waged war against the Ostrogoths for 30 years and destroyed Rome's aqueducts during a siege of the city. Rome's population fell from 1.5 million to 10,000, and the remaining Roman citizens were forced to live along the banks of the Tiber, desperate for water. Justinian would lose most of his reconquered empire, but he built Hagia Sophia in 537 AD, bragging that he had outdone Solomon, who had built the First Temple in Jerusalem a millennia earlier. The Byzantines also created icons (painted on gold leaf on wood with egg tempera) as portraits of saints and religious figures who could be prayed to, and they also created mosaics.

During the 7th century, Islam emerged in Arabia, becoming the third major Abrahamic religion. Founded by Muhammad, Islam was very similar to Judaism in its dietary laws and to Christianity in its acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah, but it believed that the descendants of Ishmael (and not Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews) - the Arabs - were the chosen people. Muhammad was also said to be the last prophet, and he ordered his followers to spread the Quran everywhere. The Arabs came out of the Arabian Peninsula and conquered the exhausted Persian Empire and much of the Byzantine Empire, and they also conquered most of Spain. In 732 AD, their advance was halted by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, ensuring that Europe remained Christian, and that Christianity would not die in the cradle after just over 350 years of being the state religion of Rome.

A pivotal moment in the late Dark Ages was the rise of Charlemagne, King of the Franks. The grandson of Charles Martel, he became King of the Franks in 768 AD and, over the course of almost five decades, oversaw the expansion of his empire to not only include France and the Low Countries, but also much of Central Europe, most of Italy, and parts of northern Spain. On 25 December 800, the Pope invited him to Mass in Rome, where he surprised Charlemagne by crowning him as the first "Holy Roman Emperor", giving him the legacy of the Roman emperors; this offended the Byzantine emperors, whose Orthodox Christianity made them rivals with the Catholic Pope. Charlemagne tried to bring back art and culture during the Carolingian era, but his attempts were short-lived. In 962 AD, the Pope called the German prince Otto the Great to become the new Holy Roman Emperor, initiating the Ottonian era. Otto would do much to stabilize Europe during his reign as King of East Francia (the first of many titles) from 936 to 973, including the final defeat of the invading Magyars at Lechfeld in 955 and the conquest of Italy from Berengar of Ivrea in 961, and the unification of many of the German tribes into a single kingdom.

One of the biggest threats during the Dark Ages were the Vikings, Norse seafarers who raided, raped, and pillaged across the Western world. The Vikings were known to be excessively cruel, slaughtering the men of raided villages, taking the women as sex slaves, and occasionally even selling children into slavery or killing them outright. In 911, the Vikings attacked Paris, so the Franks decided to give the Viking king Rollo land along the English Channel coast in exchange for peace. This land was named "Normandy" for the Norse "Northmen", and the Norse settlers became known as "Normans", adopting the French culture and language and becoming French vassals. In 1066, the Normans went on to conquer England in the Norman Conquest.

The halting of the Muslim invasions of Europe at Tours and Constantinople, the settling-down of the Vikings, the consolidation of the Germanic tribes into new European kingdoms, and the pacification carried out by the great emperors Charlemagne and Otto contributed to the end of the Dark Ages. Monks founded universities to teach a diverse array of lessons to boys, Italian city-states such as Padua, Pisa, and Milan founded their own universities, and Arabs had the Jews translate Greek and Roman works on science, medicine, philosophy, and math into Arabic (later being re-translated into Latin from Arabic by the Italians, boosting Western intellectualism). With peace and culture returning to Europe, the Dark Ages had come to an end by 1000.